E-Visa To Boost Travel and Tourism in Malaysia: Ken Research

Malaysia is forecasted to meet 36 million tourists target by 2020 and bring in revenue of USD 52.4 billion

Inbound trips, domestic trips and international trips are expected to grow over the forecast period.

Ken Research announced its latest publication on, “Travel and Tourism in Malaysia to 2020” which discusses detailed analysis of tourists spending patterns on different categories such as hotels, food, accommodation and travel. Report also contains the consumer trends and the major drivers in the tourism industry describing the market penetration and future potential of industry. In addition, detailed distribution and packaging data in the report enables the reader to interpret future outlook on how the market will shape up by the end of this decade.

Malaysia registered millions of tourists and received huge receipts as earnings in 2014. It was the second largest resource for influx of foreign exchange to the country but there came a turning point in the tourism industry and there was a drop in country’s foreign exchange reserves. Malaysia witnessed two air tragedies which involve flight MH370 which disappeared in March and flight MH17 was shot down on July 17. After these accidents, tourists do not have same enthusiasm for a tour to Malaysia and they started choosing other destinations over Malaysia. Also the negative publicity regarding security by foreign media caused a huge loss to tourism industry in 2015. There was a significant drop in number of tourists from 2014 to 2015. However, market is expected to grow and recover in 2016, and major reason could be depreciation of Malaysian currency. Depreciation of Malaysian currency is helping tourists to roam in Malaysia at lower cost.

Tourism is supporting the growth of various sectors. Hotel industry and transport intermediaries are reaping the maximum benefits. It is creating both wealth and employment resulting in growth of Malaysian economy. Every country is promoting its tourism industry to increase its reserve of foreign exchanges as a result there is a divergence of tourists from Malaysia to other economies thus decline in tourists arrivals. Malaysian outbound trips and domestic trips captured a satisfactory share in 2015.

In 2016, Malaysian government launched e-Visa programme. Malaysia is expecting half of the tourists from China and this e-Visa programme is the initial step to help achieve the goal and for the development and expansion of tourism industry. Additionally, Malaysia has announced its new tourism ambassador, Shila Amzah to boost arrivals from china. She has won the hearts of the Chinese after becoming the champion of Asian Wave (a Chinese show). Also, Malaysian government announced a visa-waiver programme for Chinese tourists in expectation of influx of tourists. Under this programme, Chinese can visit Malaysia for not more than 15 days.